New lilypond website - documentation

[Andrew Bernard]

Hello All,

Since the website has suddenly come up again as a topic, while I disagree with a lot of the talk here, allow me for once to say something positive. Concerning the documentation on the website, this has always been a good idea because it is indexed by search engines – I often find it is easier to google a search for something in the lilypond manuals than using other ways! So keeping the documentation online, and building it from the source code in an automated process is an excellent design criterion.

In terms of ‘modernity’ which people seem to be keenly interested in [I am not convinced that this is a primary goal of web development, as more often than not modernity is mere ephemeral fashion], then I would like to point out that there is an excellent open source solution for online documentation called ReadTheDocs.

http://docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Since I believe one should put one’s money where one’s mouth is (!) I would be very happy to investigate this solution and code and implement it, and maintain it for the lilypond community.

As another point, in relation to renovated websites, the Haskell programming language website has had a recent makeover very much in line with the ideas people are discussing here. Similarities abound – Haskell is a superb open source Functional Programming language, that like lilypond, has no commercial basis, but does seek to increase its industry mindshare, at which it is becoming increasingly successful.

https://www.haskell.org/

Andrew